Here's a little fictional ghost story based on Homeville and my latest novel set there, Premonition.
Part of the story is true...
I was five, and my grandfather was my hero. He took me around his half acre garden, explaining all the plants and vegetables, he took me to the spooky cemetery out back and pointed to the gravestones, explaining who they were and how they died -- particularly one woman who died in childbirth. Her little baby died, too, and was buried right beside her. I was barefoot and mesmerized, a country girl with big eyes and a vivid imagination.
One afternoon, we trudged up to the second floor of the farmhouse (see pic here) It was hot in those days -- no air conditioning, just fans to throw around the air. Grandaddy put up a ladder and opened the entrance to the attic. Recall, I was small, and I had no idea what an attic was...I thought it was an entrance to the past. And, in a way, that's what an attic is -- a place where the past is stored. Grandaddy let me look into the opening and I saw boxes and old dressers, a pile of tools and a trunk full of lacy cotton undergarments. I know now these were from the early part of the 20th century, but at the time I thought they might be the clothes of ghosts.
Grandaddy disappeared into the attic, looking for an old footstool, and I stood at the entrance, dizzy from the heat. I saw visions of the graveyard where my ancestors were buried. I thought about the baby and that's when I saw her -- a woman dressed all in white undergarments, her hair pulled on top of her head, reaching out to me. I felt the tendrils of her hands on my arms, her warm breath on my cheeks, and I screamed.
Grandaddy was upset of course. Why was this little kid screaming while he tried to a stool in the attic? I told him I saw a lady in white, but he only laughed.
Was she a figment of my imagination, or was she trying to get back her baby?
That's why it's still mysterious in New Mexico -- and Homeville, too.
